Passing an hour in the company of Percy Grainger’s music is always
a delight. The Bilder Duo offer a program of some of his most popular
works in versions for piano four-hands and for two pianos: Shepherd’s
Hey, Country Gardens, Lincolnshire Posy. The folk
tunes, the homages to Grieg, the wit and whimsy and unexpected emotional
import, are all here in strength.

As a ‘greatest hits’ album of Grainger for two pianists,
this stands alone. Some works appear here in their original forms, before
more famous orchestral versions, while others are Grainger’s own
re-workings. Lincolnshire Posy, for instance, appears here in a
version Grainger concocted immediately after it was originally written for
wind band. The booklet is rather spotty on most of the works’
histories, listing dates of composition and “reworking” but not
always telling you what tune was originally composed for what
instrumentation.

The biggest piece on the program, and my own favorite, is the
Fantasy on Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a twenty-minute-long epic
that makes essential listening for lovers of either Grainger or Gershwin. It
rearranges bits of the opera to make the resulting piano piece a satisfying
stand-alone work rather than a piano retelling of the story, which is really
a good thing. “Summertime” and “Bess, You Is My Woman
Now” are saved for climactic appearances near the end. “It
Ain’t Necessarily So” shows off the two-piano medium when the
main theme is exchanged between the players. It’s a fantastic piece,
comparable in excellence to Earl Wild’s one-piano Grand Fantasy
on the opera and George Gershwin’s own orchestral suite, Catfish
Row.

The Bilder Duo, pianists Caroline Weichert and Clemens Rave, are
frankly impeccable in this repertoire, technically spot-on and a lot of fun
for the ears. They’ve been a duo since 2007, and they clearly enjoy
this music. The acoustic is one of the better-sounding spaces recorded so
far by the Grand Piano record label; at first it sounds a little dry and
constricted but after a few minutes I forgot my complaint, and the Gershwin
fantasy builds up very impressively. So it all comes down to how you like
your Grainger: if you like it on keyboards, run out and grab this. Even
those works represented here which have been recorded before, in these
arrangements at least, aren’t available in such a convenient one-stop
anthology. I’m very glad to have this CD.